5 Pfennig - Tübingen

Tübingen's iron 5 Pfennig notgeld emerged from the acute metal shortages that gripped German municipalities from 1916 onward, as copper and nickel were diverted wholesale into war production. Cities were authorized to issue their own emergency coinage precisely because the Reichsbank could no longer supply adequate small change — a quiet administrative admission that the war economy was cannibalizing itself. Tübingen, a small university town with no significant industrial output, was an unlikely mint by any measure.

Iron was a poor substitute: it corroded readily in circulation, which is why survivors in clean condition are harder to locate than the modest original distribution might suggest.